


The Darkness and the Other

by umbel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amara's POV, Codependency, Creation Myth, Gen, in which Amara is right and God is also right and also they're both wrong, written between 11x21 and 11x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 22:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6875578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbel/pseuds/umbel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I was stupid. Naive. I thought if I could show my sister that there was something more than just us, something better than us, then maybe she'd change. Maybe she'd stop being… her. But every time I'd build a new world, she'd destroy it."</p><p>God survived; he made the universe, he wrote their story. It is not the story that his sister remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness and the Other

In the beginning there was darkness.

It considered itself; it was complete and entire and without flaw. Complete, and yet… _What am I?_ the darkness asked, looking further. And the part of it that looked at itself stepped away, so that there were two, staring into each other.

 _You are everything I am not_ , said the second. _And I am everything you are not._ This was true. The darkness was satisfied.

 

* * *

 

In the beginning there was darkness and one other. They mapped out their own limits and each other's, shifting and redefining until they found a stable arrangement. Stable, and yet… _What are we?_ the other asked when they were finished.

 _You are everything I am not, and I am everything you are not_. _We are ourselves,_ the darkness said patiently. _Together._

 _But what does that mean?_ the other asked.

The darkness didn't understand. Why did it have to mean anything? _What do you want it to mean?_

And so the other named them: she, the older sister, darkness, stasis; he, the younger brother, light, life and change. The darkness hadn't wanted a name, hadn't needed one to be content, but she understood that her brother did, and that was enough because he was enough.

 

* * *

 

 _Here is something new_ , he said, and at first she thought he was referring to himself, because there was a feeling in him that she didn't recognize. An anticipation, perhaps? A gladness. Pride.

 _I created it_ , he said, and looking more closely she glimpsed creation itself.

She didn't know what beauty was, but _this_ was something else entirely: sweet, boundless infinity, carved up and violated and crippled by the torturously faint memory of perfection. She came closer, reached out to it, but through the flesh that caged it she felt no connection.

The first sound she ever heard was screaming.

She touched creation, and it dissolved back into darkness, and again there were two, the darkness and the other, whole and entire.

Shock flashed through him, then anger, but when after a long moment he finally asked, _Why did you do that?_ all that was left was curiosity.

 _It was screaming._ He must have heard the screaming.

 _Pain is a part of my creation_ , he said. _It is necessary for change._

 _What is change necessary for?_ she asked.

_Change makes it possible to become something better._

_I don't understand._ Better? She was herself, and he was himself, and she could feel every edge of him pressed up against every edge of her; together they were completion, more infinite than infinity. _It is incomplete,_ she said slowly. _It is… separation._

 _It is potential_ , he corrected.

_I don't like it._

_What would you do better, then?_ And she didn't know. But that didn't mean she was wrong.

 _I don't like it_ , she said again, a little helplessly. They didn't speak of it again.

Not until the next time.

 

* * *

 

_What would you do better?_

He made, she unmade; creatures and worlds were born and died between them, until even in the moments when there were only two (the darkness and the other, whole and entire) the darkness thought she could still hear the screaming. The sound seeped into her silence, scattered her peace.

 _What would you do better?_ With each unmaking, the question was stained with greater annoyance, just as she was stained with his disappointment.

_Why does it need to be better?_

_Don’t you ever imagine having something else besides this, besides just us? Something different?_

_Why would I want anything else? I have you._

_We can have both._

_Why?_

_Because it is better._

_Why is it better?_

_Because I want it_ , he snapped.

For a long moment nothing more was said; the darkness moved gently against her brother like a prayer. _Please stop_ , she said.

He did not respond.

 

* * *

 

Nothing changed between them. Nothing had ever changed. She began where he ended, and she ended where he began, with barely a seam in between. And yet… he receded, as if every unravelled creation was an unravelling of himself.

There was a strange opacity to him now, that was the problem. Even when he spoke it seemed to come from a great distance within himself; when she rippled at him tentatively there was no response except the echoes of their own conversations. _What would you do better?_ He wanted her approval, she thought. He wanted her to understand.

She couldn't understand. He said, _I am light and life and creation_ , _and you are all else_ , and all else had very little interest in such questions. His own birth had drawn together every scrap of question, every seed of ambition that the darkness had known, and his naming had taken anything left behind.

But she could want creation because she wanted him. She didn't need anything else to be content, but he did, so he would have it. That was enough. It had to be enough.

So when at last he made the archangels, she considered them carefully and without comment. He asked no questions. She did not touch them.

She didn't know that it was too late; he had long since made his decision.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Light and dark, creation and destruction_ , he told her through the brilliant singing of the archangels and the heavy walls rising up around her. _I understand now. You are everything I am not, and so you will never want what I want. I will have to create others who do._

 _No_ , she tried to say. _Separation and completion. We were meant to always come back to each other._ Her last desperate words were, _I'm sorry._

He said nothing. The walls closed around her, ripped down the seam between them, and for a long time she was lost in agony beyond thought or words. Every edge was searing, incomprehensible pain. She felt as if she was dissolving into something indefinable without her brother to hold and to see her.

Once, she had been herself and alone, complete and entire, she reminded herself grimly as the pain began to recede. She could do it again.

 

* * *

 

She could not do it again. It was impossible. She was a fragile facsimile of herself in this emptiness, overcome by waves of emotion so strong it was like shattering and reforming at the same time.

Sometimes she unravelled into grief because every moment she was unseen and unknown, and every moment to come would be the same, and how long, _how long_ could she bear this. Would he come back to her if she promised to be better? She could learn to be better. Maybe without him here to remind her of herself, she could become something different. Something he would call family again.

Sometimes she became tight coils of fury because how dare he, how _dare_ he tell her what she was and wasn't, and demand things of her he knew she could not give, and be _disappointed_ when she fulfilled every expectation. He could have loved her but he chose to give his love to something else instead, and she wanted _all_ of it, every scrap of love he had belonged to her and her _alone_.

 _There is something better_ , he had said each time. _I can find it. I will make it. You'll see._

Finally she understood that he was trying to say, _There is something better than you._

 

* * *

 

Time begins; time passes. She festers.

While God dazzles himself with his own heights of ingenuity, the darkness rages and scorns and mourns and drifts apart and comes back together. She is an open wound within the brightest archangel, the one who wears the seal of her prison like a livid brand upon his Grace. Lucifer cradles her carefully, wondering that God could love something so profoundly and give it up; he honors the sacrifice his father has made for creation. He wears her so long and well that by the time God points to a primate and says _Here is something new,_ Lucifer is no longer sure he can remember where archangel ends and darkness begins.

Maybe it is his father's eternal dissatisfaction, his confident quest for something more and better, that prompts Lucifer to do what follows. Maybe it is his aunt's horrified scorn for something deliberately made _lesser_ , for God's macabre fascination with how much infinity he can cram into a tinier and tinier box. It is the festering rage trickling through the Mark, though, that surges forward as he reaches out.

Her touch no longer annihilates, but it still transforms – no longer brings unconditional peace, but the knowledge of imminent betrayal; she and Lucifer touch the first humans and their souls escape their bodies as fetid black smoke. From far away she feels God's wrath, and is grimly satisfied.

Some human theologians later say that hell is not fire and brimstone, but eternal separation from God; no torture could possibly be more exquisite.

Lucifer tries his best, though.

 

* * *

 

**_Release._ **

The shock is nearly as great as the shock of confinement. Even as she pours out of her fracturing prison it makes her boil and writhe with unbearable white-hot stimulus. What has _happened_ to her universe? Creation seems to go on forever. It is so large that the familiar sense of her brother is the thinnest of threads, too small to follow, and that is _impossible_.

It doesn't matter. She will carefully inspect every inch of his creation and then she will touch it and heal the wound he has made in them both. He will come back to her when there is nothing else left.

Without meaning to she pauses, attention caught by two humans as she rushes over and around them: small and faceless as the others she has infected already, and yet somehow anomalous. She _knows_ one of them. _Dean Winchester_ , his soul whispers to her as she passes, and she can feel the invisible wound in his arm where she was ripped out. This is the creature that held and released her. For a moment the world narrows down to a single point as she considers this paradox, this slice of the infinite, the human who stands untouched at the end of everything.

It is still difficult to connect properly through skin and blood and bone and she doesn't dare touch him, not directly, until she's decided what he is to her. But there is an echo of an imprint left within her from when he carried the Mark, and it helps her filter what she can sense. There is something raw in Dean Winchester that matches up to her own torn, aching edges, she discovers. Her rage and grief and, yes, even shame were merely the lenses that focused his own. His history and future are endless cycles of love and betrayal and raw need. 

Her pain fades away as she contemplates his. This feeling of surprised recognition, is it… beauty? A human word comes to her when he speaks: _bliss._ Yes.

For the first time, she contemplates existence without God and the thought satisfies. Maybe there is something better after all.

_I like it here. With you. I haven't felt this peaceful in a long, long time._

Do you dream of completion, of an end without end? she wants to ask. But she already knows.

 

* * *

 

She ripples across God's green earth like fog rising up to swallow the sun, and each human she touches dies. _Your life is worthless_ , she whispers into their mouths and noses as they choke. _When they say they love you, it's a lie_ , she hums through the black veins that twist across their skin. _They never felt like you do. They will all leave you, they will all forget you, always and forever and in the end you will be alone. The only thing you can do is **leave them first**._

They shoot and stab and smother, they pull each other apart at the seams, and she can hear the screaming again, the scream that's been trapped beneath their tongues since birth, the savage desperation of infinity sundered.

Her brother hears their screams too – he must – and he does nothing. She understands that is consent.

He told her she was destruction. She destroys.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a meta I was planning on writing based on some extrapolations from 11x20 - what Chuck says about Amara and what Amara indirectly says about herself through the people she infects - and on my increasingly enthusiastic hope that God will continue to be kind of a manipulative dick and a totally unreliable narrator. And then I was like, hey, the second part of this is turning out kind of narrative! And then it sort of exploded.


End file.
